”Darrin” said:
See Implied Powers under constitutional construction. In short, Hamilton's implied powers won and Madison's strict construction lost. That's history. Ron Paul is stunningly wrong about the General Welfare Clause. Here's the great SCT Justice Cardozo summing it up [
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/301/619/case.html#640]: …
When you speak of
implied powers, you are not merely making reference to individual enumerations that were not specifically addressed within our U.S. Constitution, though are nonetheless relational as by answering true to the question of being ‘necessary and proper’. Otherwise, you are sophomorically rallying for one politic-agenda or another. The Federalist Papers clearly levies restriction upon what is to be relative under America’s concerns for establishing and maintaining its own ‘general welfare’.
Although, Rep. Ron Paul may not be entirely correct on one issue or another (as certainly no one individual holds all of the cards), to say that Ron Paul is “just flat out wrong” about the ‘general welfare clause’ goes beyond being disrespectful. The mere fact that America’s gross-national debt is now mounting over 60-trillion Dollars, is itself a testament to just how badly the ‘general welfare clause’ has in fact been “hijacked’.
The United States of America is a republic of limited and necessary government that itself has no business entwining with the private everyday affairs of its citizens.
Such as was stated within Federalist 83 by Alexander Hamilton himself: “... The plan of the convention declares that the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the NATIONAL LEGISLATURE, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended.”
Thus, the most that could be stated is that Hamilton surrendered himself to a life of genuine hypocrisy, is it then no wonder that he was challenged by Burr to a duel, which he lost consequently.
And as further clarified in United States v. Butler - 297 U.S. 1, 62 (1936):
“There should be no misunderstanding as to the function of this court in such a case. It is sometimes said that the court assumes a power to overrule or control the action of the people's representatives. This is a misconception. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land ordained and established by the people. All legislation must conform to the principles it lays down. When an act of Congress is appropriately challenged in the courts as not conforming to the constitutional mandate, the judicial branch of the Government has only one duty -- to lay the article of the Constitution which is invoked beside the statute which is challenged and to decide whether the latter squares with the former. All the court does, or can do, is to announce its considered judgment upon the question.”
